Many years ago, I visited a rural school near Taiping and got to spend a few hours in front of a class of Form Two students. My then employer, an airline, was a sponsor of an NGO that sends well-educated young graduates to teach in rural schools. That school was one of them.

I was sure my session was going to rock. The pupils would be around 14 years old, I think. I anticipated being swamped with questions about how to become a pilot or aircraft engineer or flight attendant.

No such thing happened. They stared at me blankly through the entire session. I couldn’t trigger any excitement or curiosity out of them, even with all my kampung charm and wit. I was deflated, humbled and perhaps humiliated too. My kampung street cred was torn to shreds.

Intervene early

Serendipitously, I later learnt of a major research finding that explains what had happened to me: children can’t aspire to be what they don’t see. Those kampung kids didn’t see pilots or aircraft engineers or flight attendants around them. They hardly ever saw any doctors or lawyers or other professionals either.

What they did see were people struggling to put food on the table, working hard at dangerous and low paying jobs as fishermen, farmers, factory workers or that ubiquitous Malaysian vocation of odd-job labourer.

If those children saw anything at all that resembled success, it would be the sight of young men being respected as religious and social leaders for being “learned”, influencers showing off their clout and “wealth” and – horror of horrors – politicians getting rich from politics.

The students’ more affluent peers in urban areas, however, would’ve grown up seeing plenty of positive examples around them such as professionals, corporate bosses and entrepreneurs. Such examples build strong and early images in their mind about what they want to grow up to be.

I can certainly attest to this. I grew up in a very poor kampung, where a common question that school teachers asked us year in year out was: what’s your ambition? What do you want to be when you grow up?

The most common answers were to become clerks, teachers, policemen or soldiers. There would be the rare answer of doctor or engineer. But the rule was to aspire to any job that came with a regular salary that would take you out of the fields or farms or the sea where your parents toiled.

But I actually wanted to grow up and become a pilot! It was partly because I had parents who, illiterate as they were, kept pushing education as a solution to a better life than theirs, and partly because I grew up right beside the Penang airport, where I actually got to see pilots.

Point proven I think. We need to open up young children’s eyes for the possibilities in life. Make this a critical intervention for those who need it most, the poor children in kampungs and estates and rough areas of town. Give it to them as a gift, as the starting point of a journey out of poverty.

We can’t just leave that to the parents. Many of them are caught inside this dismal loop of just trying to survive to the next day let alone have any time or energy to indulge in grand thoughts. There’s no need to intervene with children of prosperous people who already know this secret and can afford to expose their children to all the good stuff in life.

Engage with the private and public sector to expose these young children to more life options. Get them to visit aircraft hangars or cockpits or high-tech factories or financial institutions to see what the world beyond their own kampung or estate is like.

Twist some arms to get this done. Business owners of good faith will recognise this as the right thing to do, and also an investment in their own future. For business owners who are less enthusiastic – well, that’s what arm-twisting is for!

Intervene smartly

I have a friend, a professor at one of the world’s top universities who has created digital tools incorporating machine vision and artificial intelligence and all the other good tech stuff, which are used by some of the largest agri-businesses in the world.

Some smart Japanese scientists married his technology with their own expertise in psychology to turn it into a tool to understand young kids’ attitudes and preferences, cognitive, spatial, intellectual etc, that point to what they would excel in when they grow up.

This method was given a trial here in Malaysia. I’m not an expert on this, but I do know it’s brilliant technology that’s relatively affordable and absolutely what we need in this age of AI.

The technology helps children and their parents better understand what makes children tick, which will allow for early intellectual and extracurricular interventions that’ll help produce happier, productive adults down the road.

Many other lower-tech solutions are available. Any psychologist worth his or her notepad can do this. There could be multiple flavours of how this is done. They all have some relevance and utility.

Kids will more likely grow up into happy and healthy adults if they get to play to their strengths in terms of careers and vocations and other life choices, instead of just fulfilling the expectations of their parents or those of society.

But we must help them, and their parents, too, to understand this as early as possible. We must give them the tools to do this, and then other help too – such as, err, visits to aircraft hangars…!

Our political leaders must industrialise these critical processes and make them available to those who need them the most. At the same time, they can provide a treasure trove of data that can guide future policies and investments.

So these are my rather “neutral” suggestions on what we can do for young people. These efforts will require some resources obviously – hence why I brought them up in a budget discussion!

And another thing…

More than the budget, a few other things are required if we are to succeed.

First, focus on those who really need the help, such as the poor and those growing up in tough circumstances. They, too, deserve the chance for a better life; plus, if they are not helped along the way, they are more likely to be burdens on society later on.

Second, technology changes constantly. We mustn’t let ourselves get locked in with some vast, expensive and slow-changing technology that’ll create its own cost and bureaucracy – and possibly issues of integrity. Focus on smaller techs and in encouraging small players and start-ups to innovate.

This can be best achieved by creating a market for their products, an environment for them to trial out their ideas, and a supply of one of their most precious resources: data.

Third, we must get our focus right. We must look to have the best impact on employment, the economy and also innovation. Big companies are mostly already doing what’s needed – it’s the smaller ones who need the most help.

I don’t have any particular bias on what we need to build on top of the foundation I proposed. Perhaps emphasis on coding, or mental health, or TVET, or financial literacy, or professional qualifications etc. Let smarter people (and more expensive consultants) figure those out.

I just feel we must build a strong platform that will help our nation, and especially those who need help the most. This is clearly affirmative action, but perhaps one that all Malaysians can support and cheer on.

Read also: To build the future, mine the gold in rich data

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of FMT.